20131210.0800

As I noted yesterday, this week is exam week at my current institution.  I have discussed final exams a few times in this webspace, albeit with varying degrees of specificity.  Something about the finality of the exercise of siting for a final exam provokes thought, and even amid the grading that exams entail (or ought to, although I have known of professors who did not grade the final efforts of their students), there is time for that thought.  There is cognitive space that calls for filling, often through introspection and consideration of what is ending, but not always.

For example, early in my graduate career, I annoyed my office mates during final exam time.  I did not do so overtly or through the usual devices of pestering them with inanities or physical distractions (except, perhaps, for the woman who is now my wife).  Rather, I annoyed them through the ostentatious display of my unconcern; while they frenetically put together final projects and shuffled through stacks of paperwork, I sat comfortably and read--and not even for work, but for pleasure.  I admit that I did not act well in ensuring that I was seen to be otherwise concerned, to be nonchalant about my performance.  I need not have been so blatant about being done and confident in being done (although my chair in the office was far more comfortable than that in my dorm room or in the library, the other two places I would have been able to sit so long at my ease, and the comfort of my chair is important to me).

Now as then, however, I treasure the reading time that exam weeks tend to allow.  Although, as I note, time is taken up by grading (that onerous, hateful task) during the week, and I certainly have enough of it to do in the next few days, I am relieved of the tasks of lesson planning and executing those lessons.  (It is not that I do not enjoy them, but they do take up time.)  The relief opens time for me to sit comfortably and catch up on the reading too much neglected during the headlong rush that is a term of full-time teaching (and if I teach fewer classes now than in the past, I spend more time on each class, so that I am not gaining any freedom through the lighter course load).  So far, I have read from recent issues of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, to which I have subscribed since 1999 (surprising, I know).  I know also that I will take up some of the journals to which I have subscribed for several years, as well; I have noted (here) that I have not been so diligent in reading them, partly through the loss of time easily dedicated to them.  Several back issues are stacked on my desks at home and at work, and I will be poring over them before long, either this week or during the break between terms.

The "break" is busy for me, as for many of my colleagues.  The "time off" afforded those in the ivory tower--even in the basement or on the lobby floor--is not so idle as people want to portray it as being.  Exam week, however, offers the chance for some start on its tasks, for which I am grateful.